ISLAMABAD: Former prime minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday criticised the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government for not providing the opposition an opportunity to meet Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman during his visit to Pakistan.

Mr Gilani was talking to mediapersons outside the accountability court where he had come in connection with a reference filed over excessive advertisement campaigns during his ex-PPP government.He said the PTI government should have arranged the crown prince’s address to parliament.

“When I was the prime minister I arranged Chinese president’s speech in parliament and also arranged his meeting with the then leader of the opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan.”

He said it was against parliamentary norms that the government neither made arrangements for the crown prince’s address to parliament nor invited mainstream opposition leaders to meet him.

Govt should have arranged crown prince’s address to parliament and meeting with mainstream political leaders, Yousuf Raza Gilani says

Mr Gilani was of the view the government should have invited former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and ex-president Asif Ali Zardari to meet the prince.

“If someone is not in government it does not mean that we have buried them and they have no role in national politics,” he said.

Parliament, he added, represented the will of 200 million people of Pakistan and the Saudi crown prince’s address to parliament would have given a very strong signal to the rest of the world.

“Shahbaz Sharif should also have been invited to address the parliament on this occasion,” he added.

Earlier, he told the media that as accountability judge Mohammad Arshad Malik was on leave, there was no progress in the trial proceeding.

Mr Gilani, former secretary information technology Farooq Awan, ex-press information officer Mohammad Saleem, former company secretary Universal Service Fund Syed Hasan Sheikh and several other officials from the Ministry of Information Technology were named in the reference.

They were accused of illegally granting a private firm contract of the advertisements in contravention of Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) rules which cost the national treasury Rs129.07 million.

Published in Dawn, February 19th, 2019